The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Yoruba marginalisation: to what effect? (3)

    Yoruba marginalisation: to what effect? (3)

    The neglect that the Yoruba region is currently experiencing from the Jonathan administration is an intrinsic part of the de-federalisation of Nigeria by military regimes, all in the name of promoting national unity.

    Some readers have asked if enough words have not been spoken or written in the last few weeks about Yoruba marginalization and if it is not time to yield media space to other pressing national issues. Marginalisation is a national issue. It just happens that the focus today is on the Yoruba, but the practice of marginalisation of one ethnic group by another in control of central power has been with the country for long and does not show any promise of abating or disappearing until there is a major structural change in the political and economic organisation of the country.

    Hence, the four-part essay originally planned for this column on Yoruba marginalisation will be completed, despite feelings by some readers that the topic has been treated ad nauseam already. It is important for us to gbo ara wa l’agbo ye (understand each other well) on this issue, particularly as discussions in print or electronic media only start new rounds of communication for citizens in the informal sector, where Nigerians exchange ideas and feelings about the country in which nature or colonialism has put them. Those who are familiar with the informal sector know that nearly as much thinking and talking go on there as do exist in the formal sector.

    Since the issue of Yoruba marginalisation became popular a few weeks ago, several political groups and socio-cultural organisations, as well as highly informed individuals have tried to throw more light on the topic. The topic has begotten deep analysis and in some cases exaggerated conclusions that include blaming the victim. There is nothing in political action or cultural style of the Yoruba that should encourage any national leader or the federal government to marginalise the Yoruba or any other nationality for that matter.

    Plurality of perspective is an abiding aspect of Yoruba civilization. It has been this way since the beginning of Yoruba history. The Yoruba belief in life as a market place of ideas and options (graphically couched in Eyi to wu mi ko wu o ni omo iya meji fi n jeun lototo, difference in taste indicates why siblings eat separately) explains the readiness of the Yoruba to be tolerant of other cultures and to be ready to live with them without attempting to dominate them. Therefore, that the Yoruba are found in all political parties that exist in the country does not indicate disunity.

    It is, therefore, misleading to blame the worldview of the Yoruba for the marginalisation they now experience under the presidency of President Jonathan in particular and have in general experienced since the re-shaping of the Nigerian polity by military dictators. This is not to say that Yoruba individuals, like their counterparts in other cultures around the world, do not have flaws. One of such flaws is manifested by Yoruba men and women in President Jonathan’s party that is seen to have marginalised the Yoruba region. Such Yoruba PDP members have shown no concern about claims that the Jonathan administration has neglected the Yoruba region. But to encourage the Yoruba in whatever form to depart from their belief in plurality of views is to call for cultural suicide on the part of the nationality. Even if all Yoruba citizens were to suddenly alter their worldview and collectively vow to think alike on all issues and join one political party, the marginalisation of the ethnic group is not likely to come to an end.

    The neglect that the Yoruba region is currently experiencing from the Jonathan administration is an intrinsic part of the de-federalisation of Nigeria by military regimes, all in the name of promoting national unity. Direct and indirect marginalisation of one ethnic group or the other has been a part of the country’s history since 1966. At the hands of military governments, what used to be three regions (one from the north and two from the south) were changed into 36 states with 19 states from the North and 17 from the South. Over 400 of the local governments in the country were allocated to the North by military regimes under a dispensation that also allocated funds from the federation account to local governments. In effect, the revenue garnered from petroleum at the expense of the ecology of the Niger Delta was mobilized and allocated to northern states much more than to southern states, on the thinking in military circles that even development would create national unity.

    In a way, Jonathan is a victim of the policy of marginalisation and could have developed the complex of someone abused or oppressed by the Nigerian political system. Could his marginalisation of the Yoruba have ensued from a past of deprivation suffered by his people at the hands of other federal governments? But why would he punish the Yoruba for the oppression of the Niger Delta? The legislative strength of the North in the National Assembly makes any attempt to neglect the North dangerous for him politically. The cultural overlap between Jonathan’s region of origin and the Southeast makes it unnecessary to hit at the Igbo region. The only region that becomes to ignore in the re-distribution of national projects is the Yoruba region, with 22% per cent of the population but with just about 8% of the legislative strength at the federal level.

    The policy or practice of marginalisation is only a symptom of a cause that should be familiar to all observers of the country’s cultural politics. Fifty years of the advantages awarded to the North over the two southern regions by military dictators (most of whom are also from the North) had created a culture of deprivation in leaders who may not be psychologically capable of overcoming the negative effect of neglect. As things are, the country will need to have heroic individuals as presidents, if it is to bring domination of ethnic group by another that has the advantage of federal power to an end.

    For long, the ideology of even development created by military dictators and its subtext: the theology of ethnic or regional domination and exploitation have shaped the thinking of military and civilian leaders who now claim to be policemen of mainstream politics. Jonathan is largely a product of primitive geopolitical pressure or ethnic rivalry that pits the North against the South or the Southsouth/Southeast against the Southwest. But the appropriation of the nation’s resources by the federal government and the geopolitical pressure by leaders of large or small ethnic groups with federal executive power on ethnic groups with small legislative strength have to be addressed by patriotic citizens and organisations, if Nigeria is to achieve its potential as Africa’s most populous state.

    To be continued

  • The return of Anenih

    The return of Anenih

    The return of Chief Tony Anenih as PDP Board of Trustees (BoT) chairman is the most potent indication of the torment and crisis of confidence facing the ruling party. It was a terrible act of desperation to exhume the Edo dinosaur. But it is even more shocking to expect that the mothballed dreadnought, this Samson shorn of his hair, can return to service and dazzle like before. His assignment, it seems, is to ensure that Jonathan returns as PDP candidate for the 2015 presidential election. They must be encouraged to make that dream come true. For, given the extraordinary conjunction of political events in the country today, the opposition will find it more rewarding battle Jonathan than any other candidate. I think it is in vain that the president and his party chairman romanticise the exhumation of Anenih and repose abundant hope in his talisman.

     

  • Jonathan and his Maradona politics

    Jonathan and his Maradona politics

    It was former Lagos State Governor, Bola Tinubu, who in an interview granted this paper on the occasion of his 60th birthday, called President Goodluck Jonathan ‘Nigeria’s most dangerous politician.’

    Part of that lethal effect comes from the fact that because he lacks the oratorical skills of a Bill Clinton, for example, people tend to underrate him and write him off as dour and ineffective. His chess-like moves that threw the much-vaunted Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) into disarray last week, show that you dismiss him at your own peril.

    But the greater danger of his brand of politics that embraces all the dodgy philosophies of the Diego Maradona school of thought is that it always ends in tears.

    Maradona is a famous former Argentinean football player who at the height of his powers at the World Cup finals in 1986 scored a vital goal against England using underhand tactics. He then blasphemously attributed the inspiration for his dubious goal to a holy God. He scored, he said, with a little help from “the hand of God!”

    For the Maradonas of this world the end always justifies the means. It doesn’t matter who or what is trampled upon or run over in the process. But the trouble with dribblers is that they soon tie themselves up in knots because they quickly run out of space for manouvre.

    Former President Ibrahim Babangida never called himself Maradona. But the moniker naturally attached itself to the man and never detached itself. And it was all down to his penchant for periodically sabotaging a political transition that he invented.

    This last week President Jonathan showed that he has assimilated the bare essences of Maradonic politics by demobilising and balkanising the NGF with the creation of the so-called Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Governors Forum (PDP-GF).

    But while the President and his men might count what happened in Aso Villa last week as some tremendous achievement, I am less than impressed. I have long held the view that the power and unity of the NGF is grossly exaggerated.

    A few weeks ago, prominent Ijaw leader, former Minister of Information, and Jonathan’s chief cheerleader, Chief Edwin Clark, was fulminating against the NGF – accusing the body of all sorts of crimes. In reaction to his comments I had written in my column of January 27, 2013 as follows:

    “Today, Clark would like us to believe that the NGF is this new-fangled monstrosity that is a clear and present danger to our democracy. Closer examination will, however, show that the behemoth has a soft underbelly. They can be a powerful bloc when they agree, but they are as powerless as a congregation of strange bedfellows when their interests diverge along regional, ethnic or monetary lines.”

    The Aso Rock drama therefore goes beyond a clash of egos between a prickly president who wouldn’t brook a contrary word being said about him, and a governor who in the eyes of the powers-that-be was beginning to spill out of his britches. It is, in reality, the foreplay for the coming 2015 battles.

    All these chess moves are evidence of an incumbent president who has decided to run and is putting structures in place to support such a bid. This sort of aggression is usually deployed for something greater than assuaging a bruised ego.

    After Niger State Governor, Babangida Aliyu, blew the whistle on the one-term pact supposedly signed between Jonathan and PDP governors in 2011, the president’s spokesmen would not give a yes or no answer – but rather settled for hot air. The president will not be distracted and will only speak on such matters from next year, they said huffily.

    But we don’t need any other confirmation. His actions speak louder than words. His party chairman, Bamanga Tukur, has even come out to affirm the right of the president to run again. But here they all miss the point.

    In 2011 and as it is now, the real issue was not whether Jonathan as a Nigerian had the right to run. What we are confronted with is the reality that in politics in countries with a multiplicity of ethnic groups, things are not always resolved only by legalities. Sometimes factors like balance, fairness and spread come into play.

    In 1999, every Nigerian had a right to run for president. But the major parties that year decided that given the injustice suffered by the late Chief M. K. O. Abiola whose victory at the June 12, 1993 presidential polls was arbitrarily annulled by the military, that the South-West be compensated with the position in the interest of national reconciliation.

    That year, the PDP’s Olusegun Obasanjo ran against the All Peoples Party (APP)-Alliance for Democracy (AD) candidate, Olu Falae. Both men were Yoruba.

    Jonathan is free to run as the Tukur and the courts have said. But the question he will have to answer sooner than later is whether he gave his word to stand down after one term. It doesn’t matter whether he signed a physical document. Did he give his word of honour?

    I recall that after this deal was reached, and the northern governors left the group of Atiku Abubakar, Adamu Ciroma and Ibrahim Babangida and Aliyu Mohammed Gusau in the lurch, many of them became pariahs in their own states. They were perceived as treacherous individuals who deserved to be stoned for selling out the interest of their region.

    They stuck out their necks in the belief that a gentleman will keep his word. I suspect that someone like Atiku who was especially embittered by Jonathan’s decision to run in 2011 returned to PDP in the expectation that the president will not contest again. Surely, he must be wiser now.

    If there was a deep reservoir of resentment against Jonathan back then, it will be difficult to plumb the depths of regional ill-feeling were he to renounce his pact to serve for just one term.

    The tragedy for the president and country is that he talks up a storm about transforming Nigeria, yet his politics threatens to sink the nation deeper into the mire of division. Instead of offering the ‘breath of fresh air’ he promised during his 2011 campaign, all he’s doing is serving up the regurgitated banalities of previous leaders.

    What is so novel about locking governors up and showing them a video of Amaechi attacking him over the Bayelsa-Rivers oil wells dispute. The late General Sani Abacha patented the Aso Rock film show tour – trucking in everyone from traditional leaders to market women to watch bungling, bumbling generals planning to topple a master coup-plotter.

    In a country aspiring to build a democracy should we be coercing people using the tactics of military dictators, or engaging in a contest of ideas – no matter how contentious?

    What is so unique about changing the goal posts in mid-game? Babangida wrote the manual on that. As for renouncing agreements sealed with a handshake, Jonathan must have torn several pages out of the handbook of a couple of predecessors.

    Unfortunately, this base politics devoid of honour cannot take Nigeria far. If people occupying or aspiring to the high office of president can blithely disavow commitments they made to others – just because they didn’t sign a written document – why should we believe anything they tell us when they come seeking our votes again? Nigeria certainly deserves better.

  • Fayemi: Of values and the building of a successor generation in Nigeria

    Fayemi: Of values and the building of a successor generation in Nigeria

    True leadership is something quite distinct from holding an office or a position.

    I recently wrote here about the historian’s episodic or epochal interpretation/explanation of historical events. The history of this column falls squarely into that paradigm. It began largely as a counterpoise to Obasanjo’s cynical, indeed, absolutely contemptuous treatment of, not just anything Ekiti, but of Ekiti people themselves  sparing  no contempt  and denigrating to his heart’s content, the very  icons we hold in awe and  great respect in that part of the country. Nor did he stop there. He believed it was his divine right to inflict on us just about anybody as governor and would  not stop until he had,  in spite of an inchoate impeachment of the sitting governor, whimsically gifted us his kinsman, the genial General Olurin, as sole Administrator in a totally needless and, induced, emergency administration.

    That was a period when I thought nothing of his massive powers but wrote here on this page, literally every Sunday, detailing our ordeal under his creeping misrule. Then came the equally intolerable phase when, courtesy his military jackboots, a peoples’ victory was aborted at the collation centre.  That  period started on a day when, though Ekiti people were already on the streets dancing and celebrating Kayode Fayemi’s victory in the 2007 gubernatorial elections, INEC, acting on orders from above,  miraculously divined  a PDP victory out of nowhere. Thus began  a long  period of thoroughly acerbic  dirges  detailing, and recording  for posterity, all the shenanigans  the   candidate, and ipso facto,  Ekiti was made to go through  going from one tribunal to another until  God, in His infinite mercy  ensured that truth trumped  falsity and the cocktails of judicial lies  and aberrations  were  summarily  incinerated. Indeed at a point, the columnist advised the President, and Obasanjo’s protege, the late Yar ‘Adua, to order for coffins if they insisted on inflicting their whim and caprice on hapless Ekiti people as we were prepared to fight to the last man. That epoch has been fittingly chronicled in THE LONG WALK, a  book by  aides of governor Fayemi  in which  I am  privileged  not only  to have  a decent mention but which I assisted  in editing.

    Since October 16, 2010 therefore, it has become my bounden duty on this  page,  to the chagrin of not a few, to project the  unprecedented milestones  of the Kayode  Fayemi administration ,  at least, one of which – the social security payments to  the elderly – is  clearly unprecedented  in this country.

    These preliminary remarks became necessary because some are bound to rave and rant  at merely seeing the title of this article since to them, bringing the good works of a public servant to the public space tantamounts to sycophancy. For such knaves, I have neither apologies nor explanations  except to say that this column, in  unalterably promoting the good of Ekiti and  the Southwest  in  particular, and Nigeria at large, predates Dr  Fayemi’s involvement   in partisan  politics  even  though he had  much  earlier came into  the Nigerian consciousness via the Radio Kudirat which he operated  with others at great personal risk. And those making the charge obviously do not know how much Kayode Fayemi detests obsequiousness. ‘Nough said.

    In  interrogating the above topic at the Ist  Inter-Disciplinary Public Lecture  of the Post-Graduate School Of the Ekiti State University, Ado-Ekiti,  on Monday, February 26, 2013, Dr  Fayemi   started  off  by posing  the following questions  after he had  drawn attention to the oft-quoted cliche that The Trouble with  Nigeria is  a failure of leadership: ‘If, after thirty years, we are still citing bad leadership as the root of all or most of our problems, why should  we not now, be interrogating the cultural and institutional forces, both subliminal and overt, which conspire to ensure that our society constantly throws up bad leaders?’ He went further: ‘If Nigeria is to stand a chance of national rebirth shouldn’t we, of necessity, ensure that the old brigade described by Prof. Wole Soyinka as the ‘wasted generation’ and which –  has to act as nursing mother to the emerging generation – does not contaminate them with the same tendencies and thus prime them to failure?’

     These were essentially the challenges he set out to answer and because of the seminal nature of his suggestions I believe the lecture deserves to be taken far outside the limiting purview of a leaned journal.  However, since it is beyond my ken to reduce a lecture of that depth and fecundity to a half page, I have decided to restrict myself to his views on leadership. For starters, it is his view, that it is  time we soberly reflect and take those affirmative actions that will be geared towards ensuring a successor generation which will effectively redefine the ‘Nigerian dream’ in which the younger generation was fast losing faith.

    In discussing leadership failure in Nigeria, Dr Fayemi identified the following three key elements: Corruption and the decline of moral values; the conceptual debasement of leadership itself; and the inability and unwillingness of leaders to reproduce themselves’

    Corruption, he says, has remained alive and kicking  in our society simply  because of the creeping monetization of values and the growing inability to perceive and articulate one’s life goals in non-material terms. Young Nigerians, he says, have been socialized in such a way that they have no conception of non-material achievement, resulting instead in a culture that serenades only the wealthy and esteems the “big man”, but never the studious with our institutions eagerly assisting in suffocating the spark of idealism which would have facilitated our nation’s renewal.. Leadership, which he contends, is neither an office nor a title but a function, is consequently debased in our country since the pomp and pageantry, the long motorcades, the sirens, the circus-like atmospherics surrounding political leadership have become the only signs and symbols of power.

    He went further to assert that the inability or unwillingness of leaders to reproduce themselves in far better molds, which has worsened our circumstances as a nation, is signposted by our dominant cultural and institutional models which are defined by the exercise of raw power, projecting a paradigm that is based on fear and exploitation. This he considers largely a legacy of military authoritarianism with leadership cast in the image of jack-booted soldiers wielding whips, guns and swagger-sticks.

    In concluding this short piece, and to understand the lecturer’s thought process and his well-merited place as an intellectual in politics, it is apposite that we quote him, at some length, and  directly, on what he sees as the ‘deus ex machina’ to Nigeria’s myriad problems. Says Dr Fayemi, ‘we need to rescue the concept of leadership itself from the cheapening it has undergone.  True leadership is something quite distinct from holding an office or a position. We will enhance the quality of leadership on our shores if we dissociate it from the acquisition of titles and positions. True leadership is influence. It is driven by core convictions, values and ideas. In a profound sense, leadership is living out one’s values and ideas. It is the sheer power of personal example that projects influence. For the next generation of leaders, it is essential that we recognize that one does not need a political office or title to become an exemplar of higher values. We also need to redefine elitism. Traditionally, the term ‘elite’ referred to those who are enlightened. Over the course of the past decades, the monetization of our values has yielded an association of elitism with wealth. We perceive elites to be those who are simply wealthy. The first generation nationalists such as Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Hezekiah Davies, Aminu Kano and Adegoke Adelabu among others were men of thought as well as men of action. They wrote books, pamphlets and articles. They popularised their ideas aggressively. They thought deeply about their society and disseminated their musings.

     ‘For instance, while campaigning for the presidency in 1979, Awolowo said, “Look at the books which I have written, the lectures which I have given, and the many speeches and statements which I have made. You will find that there is no problem confronting or about to confront Nigeria to which I have not given thought and for which I have not proffered intelligent and reasoned solutions.” It was no idle boast. Awolowo was the most prolific of the founding fathers. It seems almost absurd to us today for a politician to advertise his intellect as one of his qualifications for high office’

    If Nigerian leaders and the led, especially its youth will read in full, not just this article, but Dr Fayemi’s offering on : Reflections on Values and the Building of A Successor Generation in Nigeria’, whether on the internet,  in hard copy or in learned journals, we just may have made that first step in facilitating and ensuring our country’s renewal and survival as a worthy member of the comity of nations.

  • A Moment to Reflect on the Talakawa Condition in Nigeria and Our World

    A Moment to Reflect on the Talakawa Condition in Nigeria and Our World

    Talakawa: Hausa, noun: Of or pertaining to the poor. The poor as a social category, as a community of the desperately needy deserving of the solicitude of the wealthy and powerful

     Herald: English, noun. 1. A person, event or thing that precedes or comes before; forerunner, harbinger. 2. A person, event or thing that proclaims or announces: A good newspaper should be a herald for truth.

                Dictionary.com (online)

    This Sunday, February 24, 2013, I begin this weekly column in The Nation. Readers accustomed to reading my column, Talakawa Liberation Courier, in The Sunday Guardian, will immediately recognize that there is an echo of that column’s title in the title of this new column in another newspaper: Talakawa Liberation Herald. I could have retained the former title in this new discursive context, this new journalistic space. But since my “migration” from The Guardian, so to speak, represents for me a momentous event in my journalistic work of more than forty years in the Nigerian press, I decided that it was necessary for me to also change the title of the column.

    Perhaps some months or maybe even a year or two from now, I shall write fully on why I left The Guardian for which I have written continuously since it was founded in 1983, perhaps the only one left among the old or aging writers, academics and commentators that were there at the beginning of the Guardian group. For now, all I will allow myself to say is that I left without rancour or bitterness but with a great deal of sadness and anger. In the meantime, my “migration” to The Nation, I feel, is an occasion that provides a unique opportunity to reflect on the column itself, hoping in the process to clarify both for myself and for my readers what it is I have tried to do – and continue hoping to do – with and through the column. In a nutshell, this exercise entails the question of the informing perspectives, ideas and values on which the column is based. And of course, with regard to these perspectives, ideas and values, the central concept is the term “Talakawa”. Concerning this concept, I wish to address two central propositions, two cardinal theses that the readers of this piece will be as startling and as confounding as I find them. What are these two theses or propositions?

    In our country, Nigeria and in many regions and nations of the world, age-old cultural definitions and social meanings attached to the poor as a definite, recognizable demographic category are changing beyond recognition to include social groups and strata that would never have been remotely close to the actual and potential ranks of the desperately poor or needy. That is the first of our two propositions. Permit me to expatiate on it carefully.

    Now, I do not speak Hausa and neither can I claim to have deep ethnographic knowledge of Hausa culture and society. What I do know about the meanings attached to the term “Talakawa” comes mostly from information I have gleaned over the decades from colleagues and comrades who both speak the language and have insiders’ ethnographic knowledge of its culture and traditions. From these colleagues and comrades, I have learnt that with the addition of the suffix “wa” to any ethnic or social group, a distinct collective identity is inscribed on the designated group. Examples are “Hausawa” or “Yarubawa” for the Hausa and the Yoruba ethnic groups respectively. I have learnt also from these “native informants” that in the wake of the oil-boom and the rise of a class of arriviste nouveau riches whose special symbol of new-found, lavishly spent wealth was the Mercedes Benz, the term “Benzawa” was coined on this same principle of adding that suffix, “wa” to identify and draw attention to a particular social group. [Incidentally, in Kiswahili, we have “Wa-Benzi” for the Hausa “Benzawa”, the same word serving reverse roles as suffix in Hausa and prefix in Kiswahili!]

    At any rate, the most important thing that I wish to draw attention to in the term “Talakawa” is implied in the first of the two epigraphs to this piece. This is the idea of the poor as a community of the destitute and the needy deserving of the benevolence of the wealthy and the powerful. Behind this idea is the historic fact that in many traditional and strongly hierarchical societies of the world, most of the poor remain poor generation after generation. Through unexpected good fortune, a few individuals in a particular generation might escape the scourge of desperate poverty but for the most part, most don’t and do not even expect to. To repeat: that is what the term “Talakawa”, in its traditional or received historical and cultural meanings, basically implies: a social identity, a worldview in which life circumstances and chances are more or less permanently fixed. I may be wrong, but I strongly suspect that this is what many readers of this column will instinctively think about when they see the term “Talakawa” in the title of this column.

    But capitalism in all parts of the world has changed that profile forever, giving new twists to what is involved in being within the ranks of the very poor, thereby opening up the range of experiences attached to being a member of the “Talakawa”. Abstractly, theoretically, there is no single modern capitalist country or economy in the world in which moving out of age-old, generation-to-generation poverty is completely or effectively blocked from anybody. People move from rural farming communities to the cities, they move from one job to another, and they move from one trade or profession to new ones perpetually, all in the hope, the promise that they stand a chance of having better lives than their parents and grandparents. But except in the richest countries in the world with high-income economies, most people in our country and our world in fact remain poor and only a sprinkling among their offspring will have better lives than they had.

    “Talakawa” has historically become a broad, inclusive term that includes millions of factory workers and wage labourers who earn significantly less than the national, regional or local minimum wage; hundreds of thousands of vendors and hawkers whose daily and monthly trade turnovers are unbelievably paltry; uncountable numbers of grossly underpaid teachers and junior clerical staff; multitudes of pensioners and old people without solvent children to act as their social safety net in their last years. As I have repeatedly tirelessly in my column in The Guardian, 7 out of every 10 Nigerians live below the absolute poverty level; in some parts of the country, the figure is close to 8 out of ten in rural areas. In other words, and to use an analogy to drive home the point, like the group of animals that when molting completely shed their old skins, the term “Talakawa” has taken on new meanings, new expressions that were unthinkable in the traditional meanings attached to it. This is why unlike the “Talakawa” of old, the new “Talakawa” cannot expect – and at any rate will never get – the consistent, regular paternalistic benevolence of the wealthy and the powerful; they must fight it out by themselves, with the non-paternalistic help and solidarity of members of the elite who take up their cause. This leads logically to the second of our two propositions which, in my opinion, is far more confounding than the first proposition.

    In the new millennium, the demographic constituencies of the “Talakawa” have been massively expanded by new patterns in which the young and the highly educated are significantly represented. Two years ago, the Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, gave the figure of over 20 million as the statistic for unemployed high school and university graduates with no prospects of employment anywhere in sight. This alarming figure is further compounded by the fact that the median age for Nigeria is 19. For those unfamiliar with the concept of the national median age, what it basically means is that 50% of Nigerians are below the age of 19 while 50% is above that age. If you raise the computational age to 30, then you get more than 65% of the Nigerian population below 30. In other words, there is a vast demographic bulge at the younger age strata of our population and this bulge feeds right into present and future specters of being and/or becoming “Talakawa” among considerable numbers of our the young of our society.

    We might choose to take some comfort in the fact that this phenomenon of great numbers of young and educated people falling into joblessness and poverty is indeed a global phenomenon, the effect – and resultant cause – of spirals of global crises in world capitalism. As the saying goes, misery loves company! In some European countries like Greece, Spain, Italy and Ireland, the figures for unemployed, educated and restless youths are close to 40%. And drawing from a personal experience, I have simply been stunned by the number of my undergraduate students at Harvard University who, in the last half a decade or so, have been expressing to me grave, terrified misgivings concerning what the future holds in stock for them.

    Each region and nation of the world must of course seek its own answers, its own solutions to the specter of being and becoming “Talakawa” – without of course being indifferent to issues of great inequalities between the various regions of the world. In the case of Nigeria, I wish to give as much emphasis as I can muster in saying that poverty, or the “Talakawa” condition, is the one single factor that unites all our ethnic and regional communities. Show me any one single geo-political zone, any state or group of states in the country where the poverty rate is better than the 7 out of 10 absolute poverty level and I will eat my words. Show me any part of the country in which, no matter how well the elites are doing politically and economically compared to other regional, zonal and ethnic competitors in the political class, the masses of the people are faring better than ordinary folks in other parts of the country and I will mortify my spirit by attending an all-night vigil of one of our most fanatical evangelical sects!

    Indubitably, the “Talakawa “ question is the bottom line of all the crises bedeviling our country since it is both directly and indirectly linked to all the other crises and challenges. This, by the way, is why this column can never possibly exhaust the range of issues it can and will take up. Beyond this and more impersonally, I would argue that the “Talakawa” condition ought to be the first item of discussion in a sovereign national conference that will sooner or later have to be convened if Nigeria is to survive as one unified, egalitarian and democratic society. In the weeks, months and years ahead, I hope to join my voice to the voices of other members of the “commentariat” [this playfully ludic term is, I believe, Victor Ifijeh’s] in The Nation and other organs of popular and progressive national conversation in our country

     

     

  • Evidence of further marginalisation of core Southwest

    Evidence of further marginalisation of core Southwest

    As is often the case when there are matters of great moment, this column is being yielded today to Chief S.B Falegan, Economist and Banker, former CBN Director of Research, and governor Kayode Fayemi’s deliberate pick for the Chairmanship of the Ekiti State Sure-P Committee, who takes a deep and dispassionate look at other areas of South-West marginalisation by the Jonathan administration. Happy reading.

    I hope and believe those who are speaking about the marginalisation of southwest Nigeria are not limiting their comments to human capital alone, but should look also at structural capital especially infrastructural development. The recent announcement by the Federal Government to construct 10 new rail lines as appeared in PUNCH of Monday December 24 2012 page 26 (business and economy) further confirms and reinforces the discrimination by the Federal Government against the Southwest of Nigeria especially the Core south west of Ondo, Ekiti, Osun and Oyo States. The information as contained in page 26 of that paper is partly reproduced below

    The Federal Government has announced plans to construct 10 new rail lines to cover other parts of the country currently not linked by rail. The Minister of Transport, Senator Idris Umar, said on Friday that already feasibility studies had commenced on seven of the proposed railway lines. Umar, who spoke in Lagos at the inauguration of the Lagos-Kano train service and resumption of fuel haulage by train from Lagos to Offa, said that the feasibility studies on three other planned rail line would be done in 2013 . He gave the total distance of the areas to be covered by the seven rail lines as 3,421kilometeres. The minister said that at the completion of the feasibility studies, the railway development project would be undertaken through public private partnership arrangement. “Upon final construction of these lines, it will improve mass movement of Nigerians and open windows for rapid economic development and regional interaction,” he said Umar stressed that all the new rail lines would be constructed as standard gauge track for the movement of fast trains. According to him, the new lines will cover Lagos-Sagamu-Ijebu Ode-Ore-Benin (300km); Benin-Agbor-Onitsha-Nnewi-Owerri-Aba, with additional line from Onitsha-Enugu-Abakaliki (500km).

    It also included a 615km-high-speed rail track from Lagos to Abuja, passing through Lagos, Oshogbo and Baro. The minister listed Ajaokuta (Eganyi) – Obajana-Jakuru-Baro-Abuja, with additional line from Ajaokuta to Otukpo (533km); Zaira – Kaura Namoda-Sakoto-Ilela-Birnin Koni (520km) as other areas to be covered. Others are costal rail line linking Benin-Sapele-Warri-Yanogoa-Port Harcourt – Aba-Uyo- Akampa-Ikom-Obudu Cattle Ranch (673km); and Ajaokuta- Eganyi- Lokoja Abaji-abuja line (280km). The other three lines, whose feasibility contracts would be awarded next year, are Port Harcourt Unuahia-Enugu-Makurdi-Lafia-Kaduna-Bauchi-Gombe-Biu-Maiduguri; Ikom-Ogoja-Kastina Ala-Wukari-Jalinhgo-Yola-Maiduguri and Kani-Nguru-Gashua-Damaturu-Maduguri-Gamborun-Ngala.

    With ten new railway lines, that exclude the core southwest, pray does the phrase “other parts of the country currently not linked by rail” include Oyo-Ekiti-Ondo? Pray why is such planned railway not extended between Oyo State (Ibadan) and Ekiti State (Ado-Ekiti) to Ondo State (Akure)? Pray how will these economic benefits extend to those neglected states? Pray how do they benefit from economic integration so orchestrated? Indeed, this deliberate policy has further shifted the operations of companies like Lafarge Wapco Cement, Dangote Cement etc who operate enormously heavy duty trucks and trailers to the neglected states to further destroy the few federal roads and those being reconstructed by these neglected states from their meager funds. You need to travel Ilesha-Akure-Owo-Benin road to see the daily carnage. Ekiti State is completely caught off between Akure and Ado—Ekiti unless you go via Akure-Igbara Oke-Igbaraodo-Ado in a circular way. Why should Okitipupa-Ondo-Akure-Benin road not be dualised? Or the Akure-Ado-Ekiti-Omuaran road from the same SURE-P? More questions are begging for answers.

    The Role of SURE-P As an instrument of nation-wide intervention development strategy.

    In its decision to remove oil subsidy, the Federal Government set up a subsidy withdrawal organ (SURE-P) which is to use the proceeds for financing development projects nationwide While each state is free to use its own share for projects of its choice, the federal share is to cover the whole federation in key areas. SURE-P, in concept, coverage, and policy implementation discriminates against the Southwest, especially the Core Southwest as shown in SURE-P documentation.

    Item 2.9 List of Road Projects: of the 1,326km roads, the 295km allocated to SW/SS covers Benin-Ore-Sagamu dual carriage way. It should be observed that the Benin-Ore-Sagamu dual carriage way has always been in the annual federal budget for the past 20 years. The NATION of Saturday 16th February 2013 page 6 has the story that the Federal Government has obtained fund from the SURE-P to construct the dualisation of Abuja-Benin Road. Yet the federal authorities are aware of the appalling state of federal roads in middle and core S/W (Ondo-Ekiti-Osun): Akure (Ondo State) to Ilesha in Osun State. The same is true of Iyamoye (Kwara State) to Omuo, Ikole, Ogotun in (Ekiti State) to Osun State. Ekiti State has the shortest federal roads in the federation and yet not one km of these roads is considered worthy.

    Item E1:33 Irrigation Projects: 19 irrigation projects are listed with 4 going to NE, 3 for NW, 3 for SE and 3 for SS. The two listed for SW go to Ogun and Oyo State as if those are the only states in SW. The Ero Water Dam and Lake, covering 11kilometres in Ekiti State is one of the largest water/irrigation projects in Nigeria established at the same time as those listed above in other parts of the country which are to benefit from SURE-P. Why should it not qualify for SURE-P like others listed above?

    Item E2:34 Rural and Urban Water Supply Projects: The little Osse mentioned in Ekiti State is put there merely to demonstrate federal presence and involvement. The Ero Water dam mentioned above can combine both irrigation for agriculture and water supply while Arinta Water falls should quality for tourism under the federal scheme. Item 36&37: Selected Power Projects: What is needed here from the Federal Government is a second 132/33KV power substation project in the northern part of Ekiti and the urgent completion of the on-going one which is no more adequate for the state capital not to talk of its adequacy for the whole state. If the Federal Government can embark on all these projects with or in addition to SURE-P funds, why is none of the federal roads as shown earlier in these core southwest not receiving federal attention?While our legislators must continue to be vigilant and alive to their responsibility to the electorate, they must not underestimate the power of policy formulators who deliberately and mischievously plan and execute such policies of discrimination to their sectional advantage. That is why I appreciate the action and vigilance of Senator Femi Ojudu (Ekiti Central) in detecting the fraud in the 2013 budget proposal for road construction where one or two roads in other states were shown as Ekiti State roads.

    Senator Femi Ojudu should go and take a critical look at the Dredging and Canalisation work at Ureje River under the Federal Ministry of Environment in Abuja. The contract was awarded for N1.2billion and reported to have been completed and paid for in 2010 whereas no work has been done on the site which is already overgrown with weeds. The contractor who quoted for N890 million for the job lost out.

    I have at my disposal a list of 44 Water Pump Projects by the Federal Ministry of Water Resources for Ekiti Local Government areas in the 2012 appropriation act which a detailed examination shows are mere repetition of previous years’ appropriation. Yet there is the impression that the projects for the bore holes have been executed and completed. That brings into question the role of Benin-Owena River Basin authority in Ekiti State development.

    Walls have ears, windows have eyes.

     

    MUYIWA IT’S YOUR DAY.

    With thanks to the Almighty God, here’s wishing my dear friend and brother, Chief Olumuyiwa Runsewe of Singafrique Engineering Ltd, Lagos, happy birthday as he celebrates the 65th of his glorious and chequered life today. Long may you live in great health, my brother.

  • Yoruba marginalisation: To what effect? 2

    Yoruba marginalisation: To what effect? 2

    Another aspect of actual marginalisation is the type that affects all Yoruba citizens. This pertains to direct and indirect neglect of infrastructure in the Yoruba region. Such neglect appears to be designed to disempower and discomfort the generality of Yoruba people. All the federal roads in the Yoruba region are in a state that destroys Yoruba business and frustrates citizens that travel on such roads. Even federal roads in Yoruba states that contribute significantly to non-oil revenue for the country are generally neglected. For example, the roads to Apapa, the country’s largest port for goods into Nigeria, Niger, and even Mali, are all neglected by the federal government. Most businesses that bring VAT revenue to the federal government from Lagos, Ibadan, and other Yoruba cities where consumers abound are slowed down by badly maintained federal roads that connect various Yoruba states: Lagos-Ibadan; Lagos-Benin; Ibadan-Ilesa-Akure; Ibadan-Osogbo-Offa; Ife-Ore; Ibadan-Ogbomoso; Agege-Abeokuta; etc. Most Yoruba states that produce cocoa, coffee, and other exportable produce are hobbled by the neglect of the roads from such states to the port city of Lagos.

    In addition, the Jonathan administration gave the impression during his campaign for office in 2011 that his government would deregulate or privatise establishment of rail transport system. It has not happened since he got elected. It is even being rumoured that some Nigerians selected to meet legislators during the one-day consultation over constitutional amendments last November have said (who,where and how?) that they do not want the federal government to allow states to have any role in establishment and running of rail transport. To be fair to Dr. Jonathan, he did not create most of the problems, but what can be honestly held against him is that the core of his election promise was (and still is) Transformation. Certainly, the Yoruba region has seen in the last few years more of regression than transformation in terms of infrastructure.

    We said last week that Jonathan’s main problem with regards to exclusionary government policies and practices is that he sings the promise of transformation to the nation while his government excludes the Yoruba region (more than any other region) from access to federal government jobs and federally-funded infrastructure. And this is despite the fact that the Yoruba region constitutes about 22% of the nation’s population.

    A lot has been said in the media about Jonathan’s direct exclusion of Yoruba from the federal public service. There have been reports that many of the federal ministries and agencies under the president’s watch have encouraged retirement of more Yoruba (than people from other regions) from the country’s public service and hiring of fewer Yoruba (than people of the other five regions) into the service. But very little is reported about indirect disempowerment of the Yoruba region under President Jonathan. There have been several subtle but striking efforts by the Jonathan administration to slow down development in the Southwest.

    It is obvious that Lagos State is the country’s most cosmopolitan state. It is generally referred to by politicians and regular citizens as Mini Nigeria, a state that has more people from all the nationalities in the country than any other state. It is also common knowledge that Lagos State has more Yoruba people than any other state in the federation. It is no exaggeration to say that all extended families in Yoruba section of the country have their most-endowed sons and daughters in Lagos State. In terms of intellectual and material resources, Lagos State stands out as the most developed state not only in the Southwest but also in the entire country. In effect, any effort to unhinge the economy of Lagos State is a sure way to unsettle the average Yoruba family.

    In a way similar to Obasanjo’s hostile attitude to growth and development in the Yoruba region in general and Lagos State in particular, the Jonathan administration appears to relish unsettling of Lagos State’s economy and by extension the economy of the entire Yoruba region. In the time of Obasanjo, the federal government did everything possible to stop federal allocations to Lagos State on the excuse that the state created additional local governments. In the case of Jonathan, he demonstrates insensitivity to efforts by his government to disrupt development efforts by Lagos State government.

    There is a report that the Jonathan administration is set to introduce a special petrol consumption tax that is to be collected and spent by the federal government or its agency. If more than 30% of all vehicles in the country are used in Lagos and over 50% of all vehicles in the country are used in the Southwest, it is clear that any effort to introduce petrol consumption tax that is to be controlled by the federal government is tantamount to denying the Southwest of additional revenue that should come to the region from such consumption tax. As if the loss of revenue by Lagos State and other Yoruba states via federalisation of VAT and issuance of driver’s licence and vehicle registration is not bad enough, President Jonathan’s government is eager to impose another consumption tax that may not be used to service the communities from which such tax is collected. The parlous state of so-called federal roads in the Southwest does not indicate that revenues collected from petrol consumers in the Southwest and put under control of the central government in Abuja would be used readily to fix the roads in the region. Such policy to further de-federalise the country is more damaging to the economy of the region than direct reduction of Yoruba presence in the federal service. Using petrol consumption tax to rob the Southwest of funds that should be used for infrastructure development and improvement of the welfare of citizens in the Yoruba region is an indirect way of additional disempowerment of the region.

    Shortly after complaints by several groups about marginalisation of the Yoruba, the Jonathan administration announced its intention to build another sea port in Badagry. Lagos State may be the largest state in the country in terms of population but it is the smallest in terms of land area. The federal government under Jonathan has ignored requests from Lagos State for special status to enable the state improve the welfare of the teeming population of migrants from other states. Even efforts of the Lagos State Government to get the Jonathan administration to guarantee a foreign loan to enable the state provide modern mass transportation to move over 18 million Nigerians that live in the state in a safer and more orderly manner have been rebuffed by the current federal government.

    It is, therefore, amazing that the same federal government is suddenly interested in building another port in Lagos State. Is this a part of the strategy to respond to charges of marginalisation, just as the superficial repair of Lagos-Ibadan and Lagos-Ore roads were put on the federal list of must-do items before 2012 Christmas to ward off complaints of neglect of the Southwest? How much space does Lagos State have for it to host another port in a country that is in a position to establish elsewhere several sea ports that can carry some of the burden that Lagos has carried for over a century?

    Lagos State needs special intervention to make existing wet and dry ports in the small state run well, without having to damage business and residential opportunities in the state. The state needs to be given derivation benefits for existing wet and dry ports that have taken so much of the state’s limited land area. It is in the interest of Lagos State for the federal government to make ports in other parts of the country work and create jobs that can reduce the exodus of migrants to Lagos every minute. Lagos is already suffocated. What the federal government needs to do is to reduce the suffocation through special grants and policies that assist the state to improve its mass transit system, not another port that shrinks the place for indigenes and residents or damages roads that the state has built for the benefit of its residents.

    Without listening to calls from Lagos State for Jonathan’s government to repair the road to Apapa and Tin Can ports, the Jonathan administration is planning surreptitiously to make nonsense of the investment Lagos State has put into modernisation of the road between Badagry and Oshodi. This is after heavy trailers going to other parts of Nigeria and even to Niger and Mali have made the road between Apapa and Ibadan dangerous for vehicular movement. If President Jonathan wants to reduce the burden on Lagos State, it should revive the rail line to Apapa and thus reduce the wear and tear on Lagos roads, not to use excuse of another federal sea port in Badagry to damage the soon to be commissioned Oshodi-Badagry road.

    Apart from praying for federal governments under leadership of men and women that can respond to the demands and challenges of administering Nigeria’s multiethnic state in a way that gives each nationality a sense of belonging, it is also possible to provide structural changes that can reduce fears of marginalisation of any of the groups in the federation. Such structural changes will immunize the federation against leaders or federal governments that may lack the sensitivity needed to run a truly united multiethnic federation.

    To be continued

     

  • Patience Jonathan’s second chance

    Patience Jonathan’s second chance

    Lazarus must have been green with envy hearing that Mrs. Patience Jonathan was in the valley of the shadow of death for one week. We had thought that Lazarus’s had been an unbroken record, having stayed only four days in the grave before Jesus Christ came and woke him up. But our president’s wife has broken that record. Although she acknowledged that she is not Lazarus, she nonetheless made public the miracle that God has done in her life at the thanksgiving service to mark her return from the ‘land of her ancestors’: “I am not Lazarus but my experience was similar to his own. My doctors said all hope was lost …It was God himself in His infinite mercy that said I would return to Nigeria. God woke me up after seven days”.

    Never mind that her aides had merely told us she went abroad to rest. One would have thought we had more than enough rooms to rest in the country. Even if we don’t have one befitting the status of the First Lady of the Federal Republic, what stops us from awarding billion naira contracts for construction of world-class rest rooms in the Villa? Anyway, she left without a tangible word to hold on to for those of us who were concerned, and rightly so, for her whereabouts. When we were persistent in trying to get something from the government concerning this, one of her aides was almost angry with nosey newsmen who kept asking about when madam would return from her trip. He asked them whether she was his mate that she would take the trouble to disclose such vital information to him!

    Yet, not a few persons had accused the presidency of lying on this issue. But it is wrong to accuse the presidency of lying because the presidency cannot lie. It merely amended the truth, by saying that Mrs. Jonathan had only gone to rest abroad, following the rigours of the 2011 elections and after hosting the African Ladies Forum, when in actual fact the woman was already having a tete-a-tete with her ancestors and would have been admitted to the league of Saints Triumphant but for Divine intervention.

    Anyway, we should thank God for Patience Jonathan’s life because it is not all the time that people who die ‘resurrect’. As a matter of fact, Yoruba people would warn that no one should play with fainting because many people who did never had the privilege of returning to this world; by the time they woke up from their expensive joke, they did so in the great beyond. That is particularly so if the people involved were Muslims. But that was not the portion of our First Lady; glory be to God.

    Since what the president’s wife experienced was a rarity, she must know that God has a purpose for bringing her back to life. Even in Yoruba mythology, when someone dies prematurely, it is believed that he or she would be sent back to earth at the border between the earth and heaven. So, for Mrs. Jonathan to have been sent back to life meant she had an unfinished business which the heavens wanted her to complete. Many of those who claimed to have had the same experience returned to tell us tales about what the other side looks like.

    So, did Mrs. Jonathan see any vision for Nigeria throughout her ordeal as a dead person? Or, what precisely did she see? Did she see any of our departed elder statesmen while she was dead? Are they on the same side with Father Abraham or are they on the other side? Are they happy with the way we are? Are they looking back at what we are doing in the country, or they have completely abandoned us as a lost cause? Are they impressed with her husband’s style of governance? Did madam see Lazarus whose record she has just beaten?

    While madam is preparing her answers to these questions and probably more, I can imagine the kind of fierce battle she would have had with that ultimate leveller, Death. To be quite frank, how many of us in Mrs Jonathan’s shoes will succumb to death just like that, leaving behind all the opulence of Aso Rock Villa, and Jonathan another Eve married? Where were such Eves all the years that they ‘siddon look’? I can imagine Death itself fleeing in the course of the battle to take Mrs Jonathan’s life, lest it got demystified in the process. Remember the story of Jacob who wrestled with an angel all night until the angel succumbed before daybreak, so that human beings and angels would not meet.

    But to have been dead for one week is not a child’s play; as a matter of fact, Mrs. Jonathan should write about her experience and she will make billions from the title/s. Imagine all the big people who would run over themselves to drop their cheques at the launch! I am surprised people are not yet putting congratulatory advertisements in the media over Madam’s speedy recover (pardon my Sir Shina Peters’ expression) from the dead. Yet, some people who never like people in power would not rejoice with our first family. Indeed, I saw some of them on my way to the General Post Office in Ikeja, Lagos, last Monday, who were speaking blasphemy about the report that Mrs. Jonathan said she was raised from the dead after seven days. They were querying why that had to be our problem when neither ‘the woman’ nor her handlers told us why she was taken abroad in the first place. How then does her thanksgiving make such big news? I literally took off from the scene because such careless talk in those days of military rule could land one in Gashua. Thank God for democracy.

    In the lighter mood, when people return from Mecca, we call them Alhaji or Alhaja. In the same vein, when people return from Holy Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, we know they are called Justices of the Peace (JP). Now that our First lady has just returned from the valley of the shadow of death, how do we refer to her to distinguish her from people who merely fainted or were in a trance?

    But Mrs. Jonathan said something that was not funny; she said that some of her aides, thinking she was dead, had already started selling some of her personal effects. This is something that is common among the ordinary folks and one would have thought that is an affliction to be found only among them. Now that we have seen that the rich also suffer such affliction, it might be interesting to know how the president’s wife has been coping with such aides with itchy palms, who were not honest over little things. Are they also having a second chance or they have already been jailed, while awaiting prosecution?

    And, talking about second chance, I guess that would be the new song in the country for some time to come. As a matter of fact, don’t be surprised if very soon someone comes up with the ingenious idea that since God was kind enough to give the First Lady a second chance, then, the First Citizen’s second chance is already signed and sealed in heaven; it is only waiting to be delivered, come 2015.

    But on a very serious note, two fundamental questions remain to be answered in spite of the celebrations, the thanksgiving and all. The first is what was Mrs. Jonathan’s ailment? And the second is how much it cost the taxpayer?

     

  • There was, indeed, a country

    There was, indeed, a country

    I have just finished reading Prof. Chinua Achebe’s There was a Country: A personal history of Biafra. Since the publication of the memoir last year to a welter of controversy over what the writer wrote or failed to write, I have declined to enter the fray because I didn’t want to fall into the same line of thought that I always accuse people of – that is judging a book only by its cover or blurb.

    Although I got the book almost as soon as it was off the press in Nigeria, but I never got to read it until recently because I already had some books lined up for reading before its publication. However, I read the excerpt published in The Guardian of London which led to the hail of controversy that subsequently made the book become such a hot cake that it instantly became the first book in Nigeria, at least to my knowledge, which though not a recommended text was pirated in the first few weeks of its publication. In Lagos traffic today the pirated copy is the most hawked and available book apart from the ubiquitous ‘pure water’.

    Although many reviews of the book have been written both in local and international newspapers, I feel that as a reader and as someone who grew up reading the respected writer and regarding him as a role model and no doubt one of the early influences that made me chose my line of career, the book under consideration falls short of what he has, for me, stood for in all his other books, most especially The Problem with Nigeria.

    There is no doubt that Nigeria is a country in search of heroes and role models and intellectuals such as Achebe and the rest of them should at the twilight of their lives look for things that would unite rather than further divide their country of birth.

    In reading There was a Country, I came away with the impression that despite the fact that the civil war ended over four decades ago, people like the much-respected Achebe still, feel the war against his people was still on. This siege mentality must stop and those in a better position to stop it are the Achebes of this world. But if people like him still feel the way he wrote about it in the book, then we have a long way to go.

    I was barely five or so when the war started and I was living in the north then, and though it was not the centre of the war I can, however, attest to it that the pogrom was real and those not killed there died while running back to the East just as it has been happening of recent with the incessant ethno-religious crises that have gripped the North in recent past.

    However, as the Yoruba say, “if you don’t forget yesterday’s shortcomings you will never get one to play with.” It is high time we put the war behind us and think more of how to move beyond our present challenges. The unfortunate civil war has become a sort of industry for many who use it as an excuse to be aggressive and ride roughshod over others and feel sidelined (the siege mentality).

    I was born in the North and lived and schooled there for over three decades, I have also lived in the East and now live in the West. so if anything, I can claim to know Nigeria and Nigerians as much as I know the back of my hand, if you permit the cliché.

    There are so many claims and assertions in There was a Country, which should not have come from a writer with the standing of Achebe. Take for instance this, “There are many international observers who believe that Gowon’s action after the war were magnanimous and laudable. There are tons of treatise that talk about how the Igbo were wonderfully integrated into Nigeria. Well, I have news for them: The Igbo were not and continue not to be integrated into Nigeria, one of the reasons for the country’s continued backwardness, in my estimation.”

    I beg to differ. What I can deduce from this claim by this respected writer is that only the Igbo hold the key to the development of this country! I am afraid; it is this kind of thinking and frame of mind that is holding our country down and responsible for our predicament. This is ethnic supremacy and nonsensical dismissal of other ethnic groups as backward and only meant to be gatemen, gardeners and cooks.

    That is not all; the respected writer believes the decision by the federal government to ban the importation of stockfish and second hand clothes, “two trade items that they knew the burgeoning market towns of Onitsha, Aba and Nnewi needed to re-emerge. Their fear was that these communities, fully reconstituted, would then serve as the economic engines for the reconstruction of the entire Eastern Region.” How can the use of second hand clothes and consumption of stockfish achieve this? Come on we must grow up.

    By my own reading, one of the major pitfalls of the book is that the writer with the role he played as an envoy for the late Chukwuemeka Ojukwu to the former President of Senegal who himself was a distinguished poet and writer, shows that he (Achebe) was a close ally of the late Ojukwu, and based on this premise, a reader like me expected that he should give us a more accurate and detailed portrait of the late Biafran leader.

    But what do we have? Just passing comments that in no way pointed to the mind of the chief planner and executioner of the plan to take his part of Nigeria out of the federation.

    In this memoir at least, we know where the writer stands where the issue of the war, the federation known as Nigeria, General Yakubu Gowon and most especially the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo are concerned, and to some extent, the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. But what does he think of the late Ojukwu? He was dodgy and unclear where the late Biafran leader was concerned. This is not the Achebe I grew up to know and admire. Many things were left unsaid while some of those things said were done with a forked tongue.

    There was, indeed, a country and a war memoir.

     

  • Time to rethink Nigeria, I think

    Time to rethink Nigeria, I think

    There is a regular, beer-parlour joke about marriage and it goes thus. In marriage, the priest usually intones, ‘a man shall leave his mother and father and shall cling to his wife with whom he shall become one’. Yes, a much beleaguered man replies to his neighbour, the question is which one. True, when two people decide to come together in a marital union, it is all you can do to stop yourself from pulling one or the other aside and asking in consternation, have you quite thought this through? Listen, what you’re about to do will not only land you in hot soup, you will even have to cook it yourself. More importantly, in the history of the world, no perfect couple exists; indeed God is still looking for two people who agree on the brand of toothpaste to use.

    So, with two people not being able to manage a marriage, here we are asking a country of different nationalities to manage their contrived and greatly multiplied ménage of strange bedfellows. Ha! This is why chaos rules in this land, ok! In this country of the deaf, lame and blind, all kinds of ideologies have come to play. Just listen here.

    Currently, we have an ideology that says one for one, none for all. This enables every individual to get to positions of power and then use that position for himself, family and group against the interests of the overall majority. Then there is another ideology that says some for one, none for all. By this, every individual is constrained to defend his or her tribal kinsman against the interests of the national majority. Finally, there is the strangest of all the ideologies: all for one, yet none for all. This permits all individuals to worship another individual who has elevated himself to the national common hood of thievery at the great expense of the vast and silenced majority.

    In all of history, no rat, elephant or lion has ever been known to adopt any of these ideologies for its own survival. It is not just because they have no pockets to hide things in, nor is it because they cannot open bank accounts to hide money in; it is more because I think they have not been able to throw away the sense of decency that God wrote into their genes in the way some Nigerians have thrown theirs over the shoulder. This is why a lion might kill to eat, but would hardly kill for hoarding or sport; a rat might hoard one or two things but believe me, it only takes things people don’t need or miss.

    I am thinking about the leaders in Nigeria who manage to show the entire world how not to manage exalted public positions. Take the example of the most recent story-break in the land involving hundreds of billions of Naira. The story is so nauseating its worse than cholera. Indeed it’s an outbreak that makes you go, ‘Yuk, what kind of country is this where people do what even animals don’t condescend to do?’ What is an individual doing with hundreds of billions of Naira, feeding?

    When we heard the story of the fellow who was alleged to have pilfered over twenty billion from the police pension funds, I reported here that it had me whistling in astonishment. When I heard recently how a certain chieftain of the Pensions Reform Task force, Mr. Abdulrasheed Maina, was said to have made away with something between one hundred and ninety-five to four hundred billion naira, pension funds of a group of people, I could no longer whistle. My lips puckered but nothing came out, especially when we heard he had been allowed to escape from the country with his loot. I just kept thinking, where is Michael Jackson to sing ‘This is it!’? This has got to be it. Anything after this I think will make Nigerians leave Nigeria for this government. Well, it would have failed to arrest the slide into total abyss, would it not?

    Anyway, I think it is not a normal situation that a citizen would fail to appear before the legislature, no matter their character, in defiance of the national law; it is not a normal situation for a police chief to be asked and fail to arrest the said citizen in spite of the fact that he was within the country and enjoying the fresh air of the same country he so flagrantly betrayed; it is certainly not a normal situation for the police chief to not be able to arrest any citizen in the land. I remember writing something in the papers a few years ago that displeased the police and I assure you, they located me all right in the little corner of the little city I lived in then.

    You have to agree that the situation begs for both questions and answers; I think it actually begs for more questions than answers. Why is it possible for such gargantuan levels of fraud and stealing to continue to take place? And as we look on, before our very eyes, why are the figures rising? Why are we now so helpless, police and all, if indeed we are? Have we completely gone bereft of our senses? Are there not enough things to use such monies for so that generations to come can bless us: an efficient rail transport system for the nation, electricity in every village including mine, public water flowing through every pipe in the land, a co-ordinated waste evacuation system in all the cities … people, there is so much to do with money in the country that this is just not the time to go diverting it.

    The problem with this country from the start has been the strange set of ideologies adopted by leading individuals in the course of our history and across the land. With our lips, every one of us has paid homage to a ‘new Nigeria’ but we have all failed to go to work creating one. A new, indivisible Nigeria, with a ‘non-negotiable unity’ requires selflessness, an ideology that, apparently, none is ready to adopt.

    So, rethinking Nigeria for newness involves three simple steps. First, we must change our national ideology. The ideology of selfishness must be replaced by selflessness. This is where everyone brings into the national purse his/her talents and resources in order to add and construct, not to take and destroy. The habit of destroying, knowing that regional, ethnic and even religious group adhesions would readily give support to individuals in case of prosecution, remains one of the most serious poisons working against this country.

    Secondly, there must be a new set of ethos to replace the current one which appears to give nearly every Nigerian the droit de seigneur over other Nigerians in his/her post. People easily forget that they are working for the public and get too carried away by all the power in the office. The greatest abusers of traffic laws are the police drivers, and drivers of state functionaries, including governors, lawmakers and those from government house. As a member of a sadly small but still sane community in Nigeria, whenever I have seen a government vehicle on the roads, I have given them right of way. That way, I ensure I get back home.

    This complete disregard for the law will not profit anyone in the long run. For us to rethink Nigeria, there must be a new regard for the law and this can only happen when leaders retain objectivity. Allowing someone who has committed such a financially heinous crime to escape is tantamount to allowing expediencies to drive the government. Evil portends evil.